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Last week I posted about a great Business Class fare for travel between Milan and New York which I thought would be pretty hard to beat but that’s exactly what’s happened. Once again the fare is for travel with the oneWorld alliance and, once again, it’s Finnair that’s the key to the deal.
I’ve found 2 fares that are excellent and one where the price is great but that comes with a downside – it’s up to you to decide which (if any) work for you.
Fare 1: Paris – New York Business Class From $1,435 (£990/€1,282)
This is the best fare that I found and, not only is the price exceptionally good, but availability for this fare is amazing too.
Headline Info:
Route: Paris CDG – New York JFK – Paris CDG
Dates available: June – August 2016
Tickets must be booked by: 8 June 2016
Advance booking requirements: Reservations must be made at least 14 days before departure
Stopovers: Not permitted
Availability:
Availability for this fare is so good I can’t imagine anyone having an issue finding a set of dates that work for them.
Basically you can depart on pretty much whatever day you choose and, providing you select the right duration of stay, you’ll be able to get this fare.
The “minimum stay” requirements of the fare say the following:
“[Return travel] must commence no earlier than 12:01am on the first Sunday after departure from fare origin”
Put simply, you need to stay a Saturday night.
Still, if you’re in a position to leave on a Friday (for example), you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to how long a trip you can book (max. trip length is 12 months):
Finding the fare & booking:
As always, I found the fare using the ITA Matrix search so that’s a good starting point when looking to find dates that work (feel free to get in touch if you have issues).
ITA has a recent history of pulling up some phantom fares but this definitely isn’t one of them.
The key to the fare is that, although the flights are on American Airlines……
…it’s actually Finnair that provides the best fare:
Mileage Earning:
This is where things get really good.
Because of the current promotion that American Airlines is running (Iberia and British Airways also have similar promotions but they are targeted) this fare will earn travelers a lot of miles.
- AAdvantage Miles from the promotion: 25,000
- AAdvantage Base miles from the flights (based on distance): 7,269
- AAdvantage Miles for Flying Business Class: 1,817
Minimum miles earned: 34,086
Travelers who hold AAdvantage Gold status will earn a further 1,817 miles and those with Platinum or Executive Platinum will earn an extra 7,269 AAdvantage Miles.
Travelers can therefore earn over 40,000 AAdvantage Miles with this fare.
I value AAdvantage Miles at a very conservative 1.24 cents each so that would be an effective rebate of nearly $500.
Business Class from Paris to New York (round trip) for, effectively, under $1,000 isn’t bad at all 🙂
Aircraft:
This is where you need to be careful because American Airlines flys both a 777-200 and a 757 on the Paris – New York route and you definitely want to avoid the 757.
The 777-200 that American uses is one of the refurbished aircraft and so will have the new Business Class seat in an all-aisle-access 1-2-1 layout (as also seen in the airline’s 787 Dreamliners):
American Airlines Business Class
This is definitely one of the better Business Class seat you can book across the Atlantic and that’s what makes this fare that much better.
Fare 2: Paris – Miami Business Class From $1,575 (£1,085/€1,408)
If you’re looking at price in isolation then this is only the second best fare of the three I found but, if you look at it on a cost/mile basis, this fare is actually cheaper (17.2 cents/mile v 19.7 cents/mile)
Headline Info:
Route: Paris CDG – Miami – Paris CDG
Dates available: June – August 2016
Tickets must be booked by: 8 June 2016
Advance booking requirements: Reservations must be made at least 14 days before departure
Stopovers: Not permitted
Availability:
While availability for this fare isn’t as good as for the Paris – New York route it’s still pretty hard to complain at the options available to travelers:
Finding the fare & booking:
As with the New York route, I found the fare using the ITA Matrix search so that’s as good a starting point as any.
Once again, the key to the fare is that, although the flights are on American Airlines……
…it’s actually Finnair that provides the best fare:
Mileage Earning:
Once again, because of the current promotion that American Airlines is running (this fare will earn travelers a lot of miles.
- AAdvantage Miles from the promotion: 25,000
- AAdvantage Base miles from the flights (based on distance): 9,177
- AAdvantage Miles for Flying Business Class: 2,294
Minimum miles earned: 36,471
Travelers who hold AAdvantage Gold status will earn a further 2,294 miles and those with Platinum or Executive Platinum will earn an extra 9,177 AAdvantage Miles.
Travelers can therefore earn over 45,000 AAdvantage Miles with this fare.
I value AAdvantage Miles at a very conservative 1.24 cents each so that would be an effective rebate of nearly $560.
Aircraft:
The news on the aircraft isn’t quite so good here.
While American also uses Boeing 777-200 aircraft on this route, as yet these aren’t the refurbished versions. That’s actually good news for those in the Economy class cabin because the airline hasn’t yet squeezed and extra seat into every row but it also means that the aircraft has the very old “angle-flat” business class seat in a 2-3-2 layout:
It’s not exactly great but it’s still a lot better than sitting at the back!
Fare: Paris – Boston Business Class From $1,593 (£1,100/€1,424)
I’m not going to spend any length of time typing up the details of this fare because it has one major flaw….it’s for travel on a 757 aircraft and that’s really no way for anyone to travel in Business Class.
Nevertheless, if someone out there needs to get to Boston and is looking to earn some miles into the bargain then this fare may be of use.
It’s available on the American Airlines website and for a wide range of dates between June and the end of August.
Mileage earning from this route would look something like this:
- AAdvantage Miles from the promotion: 25,000
- AAdvantage Base miles from the flights (based on distance): 6,897
- AAdvantage Miles for Flying Business Class: 1,724
Minimum miles earned: 33,621
Travelers who hold AAdvantage Gold status will earn a further 1,724 miles and those with Platinum or Executive Platinum will earn an extra 6,897 AAdvantage Miles.
Travelers can therefore earn over 40,000 AAdvantage Miles with this fare.
Bottom Line
If you take a look at the whole package (fare, miles earning and aircraft) the Paris – New York route is hard to beat….but I wouldn’t write-off the Miami option just because of the aircraft.
A lot of us are extremely lucky to be able to fly in the way we do and it wasn’t all that long ago where flying in the Business Class seats on the 777-200 was considered a very nice trip indeed. Add to that the fact that you would can earn over 45,000 AAdvantage miles as well and this isn’t really that bad of a deal at all 🙂
[…] some of the excellent Europe-USA Business Class flights I’ve been posting recently (here and here) then you could easily earn over 80,000 AAdvantage miles in that […]